There is a direct relationship between water, sanitation and health. Inadequate water and sanitation infrastructure and unhygienic practices facilitate the transmission of pathogens that cause diarrhoea, which accounts for 2 million child deaths annually in the world, about half of them in India. Globally 1.1 billion people, including an estimated 638 million in India alone, practice open defecation (OD). This is inextricably linked to the very low availability and use of toilets. In India, the 2011 census indicated that less than half (46.9%) of households (HH) have latrines within their premises. Disappointing results from incentive driven government schemes for toilet construction and increased political commitment to sanitation led the Government of India (GoI) to elevate achievement of Open Defecation Free (ODF) status to a national mission in 2014. India aims to achieve ODF status by 2019 through a mix of strategies that include financial incentives for HH toilet construction, recognition and rewards for villages that become ODF, and community led initiatives to mobilise behaviour change. Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) is one such community empowerment approach. CLTS seeks to raise awareness of the faecal-oral contamination route, by capitalising on human emotions of disgust and shame to bring about community-wide change in defecation practices, with the ultimate goal of triggering entire villages to become ODF. [86 pages] Read More...

Under the Yemen Crisis Appeal and with the support from Disasters Emergency Committee, CARE Yemen has been implementing two emergency response projects in Abyan and Amran Governorates of Yemen with the aim of responding to the WASH, food insecurity and Cholera/Acute Watery Diarrhea (AWD) Crisis. This report provides the findings of the evaluation of the two phases of the DEC funded emergency response projects in Sawyer districts of Amran Governorate, Yemen.
The overall purpose of this evaluation was to ensure accountability and identify lessons learned and best practices so as to feed into and inform the decision making process of the project stakeholders, including the donor, beneficiaries, and government counterparts. In addition, the evaluation aimed to objectively assess the relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability of the project in light of its objectives and provide recommendations for future programming. Furthermore, the evaluation assessed how the project ensured accountability to affected groups, considering the commitments of the Core Humanitarian Standards, and how the project ensured quality of implementation vis-à-vis emergency response standards such as SPHERE. [72 pages]Read More...

CARE International in Zambia is an international NGO that has worked in Zambia for over 20 years, focusing on humanitarian response and development in rural and peri-urban areas. CARE has been implementing projects in the areas of health and HIV/AIDS, maternal and child health, water and sanitation, social protection, governance, education, gender equality, economic empowerment and environmental conservation among others. To achieve sustainability of its interventions and ensure true ownership in communities of the processes supported by our work, CARE Zambia works with existing community structures and engages participating communities to increase their capacities to be responsive to their own developmental challenges. [59 pages] Read More...

For the water component, CARE International in Lebanon developed with good coordination mechanisms and collaboration with the different stakeholders, particularly South Lebanon Water Establishment and the municipalities. This great collaboration was very fruitful to identify the project objectives and the priority interventions on the water supply infrastructure. Both SLWE and the municipalities have positively received the collaboration and have shared available plans and data and have taken an active role in designing and selecting the interventions type and intervention areas. CARE met with the SLWE authorities to identify the most needed interventions in terms of access to water. The priorities shared by SLWE were discussed at WASH Sector level first in order to prevent overlapping among implementing agencies or intervention gaps. The municipal representatives were consulted to ensure alignment of municipal plans with SLWE’s plans. CARE WASH specialists examined the proposed options and discussed them with SLWE and with the municipalities in order to guarantee the impartiality of the selection, cost-effectiveness, and relevance to the mandate of the organisation. During the period of the enginnering design preparation done with Kredo Engineering, a change of the lines to be rehabilitated was raised compared to what was planned in the initial proposal and new targeted areas have been identified by SLWE in coordination with CARE WASH team to be included in the design package (see more details in R1). [42 pages] Read More...

The aim of this evaluation is to assess the effectiveness of IRP’s integrated nutrition strategy of combining nutrition, agriculture and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) to improve the nutritional status of pregnant and lactating women and of children younger than 2 years. USAID/Mali will use the findings of this evaluation to inform the implementation of the current integrated strategy and the development of future projects. USAID/Mali will further share the report with the Government of Mali (GOM) and development partners who may use it to inform their nutrition- related strategies. Read More...